This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit IndiaUncut.com for the all-new India
Uncut and bookmark it. The new site has much more content and some new sections, and you can read about them here and here. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds of all the sections from here.
This blogspot site will no longer be updated, except in case of emergencies, if the main site suffers a prolonged outage. Thanks - Amit.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Law and order

The most important function of a government, by far, is to maintain law and order. It is, thus, terribly disappointing to see that our massively bloated government, which is quite efficient in stifling private enterprise and wasting taxpayers' money on thousands of things it has no business doing, can't fulfil its most important function efficiently. I don't need to point to Bihar or the Jessica Lal case to show you examples: just take the last couple of days.

Meanwhile, we learn that after the fire in Meerut, "miscreants and criminals" came to the venue of the tragedy "like vultures and took out bangles, mangalsutras, nose rings and finger rings from dead bodies," and "many purses were collected from the dead bodies and those seriously injured [my emphasis] ... Even the petticoats and bras of the dead or the injured were searched as ladies often keep money inside the lining of their petticoats or under the bras."

Meanwhile, the BJP and the Congress have alleged that many counter girls are untraceable.

The services of these counter girls were requisitioned from New Delhi, NOIDA and Ghaziabad to manage counters and boost sales, according to Vajpayee only four counter girls are admitted to hospitals in Meerut.

There were more than 100 counter girls who had been appointed to give fillip to sales and to explain to customers vividly about the products on display. It is learnt that in great hurry the bulldozers were ordered to remove the debris from the Victoria Park and many bodies were removed in the name of debris removal.

This was done to lower the figures of the tragedy at the instance of the chief minister the BJP alleged.

If it so happens that you are the victim of a crime, and need to file an FIR, well, I hope you're not in Raipur, where a district official has been quoted as admitting that "It's very common ... that police personnel seek cash for FIRs, mainly from poor people."

The rich can buy their own protection, of course, or subvert the system. What about the rest of us? We merely pay the salaries of those who are supposed to protect us. Heh.

PS: Do read Jane Galt's explanation of last year's Paris riots, which go some way towards explaning these. I'd earlier linked to it here.